Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Jenoptik conference call regarding the third quarter results 2021. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Miss Leslie Iltgen.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our conference call on the Q3 nine-month 2021 results. My name is Leslie Iltgen, Head of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at Jenoptik. With us today are our CEO, Dr. Stefan Traeger, and our CFO, Hans-Dieter Schumacher. Dr. Traeger will point you to the key highlights on the third quarter nine months results, and Mr. Schumacher will then cover the financials in more depth. As always, both will be happy to answer any questions you may have in our Q&A session at the end of this call. Also, let me remind you that this call will be recorded. A replay will be available on our investor relations website after this call. Before I hand over, please also pay attention to our usual disclaimer that you will find in the presentation.
It is now my pleasure to hand over to our CEO, Stefan Traeger. Please go ahead.
Leslie, thank you very much, and a very warm welcome from our end here to everybody out there. Thanks for being with us today. We're extremely proud to be able to report on a great operating performance and indeed solid financials of our company after nine months. The order intake is up by almost 50% versus prior years, 49% to be more precise. Saying actually that our products and solutions, in particular in the semiconductor industry, but also in the other segments we cater to, do matter to our customers, and they actually do make a difference in many ways. Our sales are up by more than 20%, despite all the challenges that we all know companies have these days in supply chain and in getting material.
We are not decoupled from that, of course, but it does show that we manage fairly well and we are aware of all those challenges, but we can manage them, and we would like to use the opportunity right up front to thank all our associates in our production environments, in our sales forces, and in our admin offices for making that possible. It's a very strong result. Sales up by more than 20% after nine months, and I think we're all really proud of that. I think almost 20% EBITDA margin after nine months speaks for itself. There is a one-time effect we have in the figures, but nevertheless, I think it's important to point out that we did make our homework. We did do our homework last year.
We did right size all the core functions. We did a lot of structural cost takeout in 2020, and that pays off now. We did a lot of portfolio management, and that pays off now as well. As I said, profitability is up big time. Yes, with a one-time effect, but almost 20% of the EBITDA margin after nine months, I do believe does speak for itself. Biggest highlight of the last nine months, though, is certainly the acquisition of BG Medical and SwissOptic. Following a successful acquisition of TRIOPTICS in 2020, we now managed to pull off another next big milestone in our company's strategic development. With this, we do things not only our business in semiconductor, but almost double our sales in life science and healthcare, which always have been a strategic target of ours.
Here as well, we would really like to extend our thanks to the supervisory board of Jenoptik that supported us in our quest in transforming Jenoptik into a focused technology company. I think our results show that it's the right thing to do. I think it's pretty clear. We're pretty proud of, I say, what we've achieved in the first nine months. Let me first of all discuss again a bit on SwissOptic. I think and Berliner Glas. I think we did explain in more detail in the specific calls that we had in the last couple of weeks, but just in simple terms, BG Medical and SwissOptic and Jenoptik really is like hand in glove.
We know each other since a long time. We know this business since a long time. It's a perfect strategic fit for us in many ways. First, on that, you can see on page five important markets we can strengthen. We together are obviously in semiconductor equipment manufacturing, which is a stronghold of ours, and I don't have to remind everyone on the what's called the chip crisis out there. You know, I mean, the fact that we have such great business in this environment is not to a small extent contributed to the semiconductor business we have or semiconductor manufacturing business we have. With SwissOptic, we can strengthen that business significantly. As I said earlier, very important medical technologies. We always wanted to expand our footprint in life science and healthcare.
With the acquisition of Berliner Glas, we can almost double that. With that acquisition. Not only do we expand our business into interesting applications. We also substantially expand our ability to produce, in particular in lower cost regions. SwissOptic comes with a facility in Wuhan, China, and with that, as I said earlier, we can expand our production network. We can even better shuffle around our production to places where it matters to our customers. We do believe that SwissOptic will contribute about EUR 130 million already next year, and we do believe that it will grow midterm by more than 10%. That growth will be driven, in particular, in the semiconductor arena.
The fact that the digitization of our world is boosting that marketplace is, I guess, no question to everybody, and we all see that in the news every day. Indeed, we do see it actually in our order intake. Nevertheless, let me also go to page number seven to point one more time to TRIOPTICS. About a year ago, we could close that transaction. At the time it has been the biggest transaction that Jenoptik did in its recent history. Of course now with BG Medical and SwissOptic, we made another big step. TRIOPTICS has been a great success for us.
We pulled this off in the middle of the pandemic, and again, you know, I think that was the right way and the right move and the right thing to do. Maybe some folks saw that as a brave move, but it pays off now big time. We see a great development of TRIOPTICS, in particular driven by, as I said earlier, the digitization of our world. TRIOPTICS does provide the gold standard when it comes to test and measurement of optics on mobile devices. We all look ever more into cameras on mobile phones and computers, and the like. Those cameras and lens systems do matter. They really do matter a lot. Quality is very, very important. TRIOPTICS, and with TRIOPTICS, we at Jenoptik, as I said earlier, provide the gold standard for exactly that purpose.
We also do believe that augmented and virtual reality will be a big future for us. I personally think that we are near an inflection point for usage of augmented and virtual reality, and TRIOPTICS can help us, will help us to play a very important role in that field. The forecast for TRIOPTICS, a revenue growth of at least 20% in this year, and EBITDA margins are clearly above group average. Two very, very important acquisitions that we've pulled off in the last years, this year and last year. We are making headway on our journey actually to transform Jenoptik into a focused technology group, where we certainly intend to continue down that path. We do not intend to stop here. We want to carry on down that path. For that, operational excellence is equally important.
It's not just about acquisition, it's also about making our core business better. If you follow me on page number eight, please. We have listed a number of steps that we have taken lately in that process. Let me point out firstly that we were able to significantly boost our financial power. We've managed to place debenture bonds of EUR 400 million. That does include a sustainability component. We are very committed to sustainability and to make our business more sustainable and in a way to make our world better, a better place. We have the right product for that. We have the right solutions for that, and we want to be measured on that.
I think the placement of those debenture bonds is one very important milestone in the quest to make Jenoptik an even more sustainable business. We have developed on further focusing Jenoptik on our strategic core. In the last nine months, we managed to sell our crystal growth business, contributed about EUR 6 million in 2020, to a partner that's more and more focused on crystal growth applications. It's a better home for that business of ours. We are really glad that we could close that transaction. We've also managed to sell our non-optical process metrology, in particular for grinding purposes, which contributed about EUR 7 million in sales in 2020 to a partner, thereby focusing our own business more and more on optics, on photonics.
Another important, if you want, strategic promise that we made to the investors of our company. Let me just remind everyone that we also deconsolidated the Hillos some time ago, which also took out about EUR 20 million for our top line. That wasn't in the last nine months, but nevertheless, it's an important contribution to further focusing Jenoptik around our core competencies in optics and photonics. We've did more than just that in the last years, in particular in 2020. We executed on, again, right sizing, right structuring and structural cost takeouts in our business. Just to remind all of us that we've closed the plant in Berlin. We combined all our activities in Adlershof in 2020. One of the steps and measures we've taken last year become more effective and more, more productive, quite frankly, to improve profitability of our company.
Not only did we divest and close plants in our operations, we've also invested in further growth. We acquired a property in Dresden in Germany, and we are going to invest into new clean room facilities, in particular for our hardcore high-tech optics capacity that delivers important products for the EUV machines that are used and needed in this world to enable the digitization of our world. Highly needed products, very high demand for those products. We invest into new factory there, production of which will take a while. So in the meantime, we try to manage as much as we possibly can with the resources we have. As I said, important investment into further growth and the future development of Jenoptik.
All in all, I think we've done a lot in the last nine months. Numbers show that it pays off. With that, I'll hand over to Hans-Dieter, who will take us through the numbers in more detail. Hans-Dieter.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Stefan.
Over to you.
Thank you so much. Hello, I'm happy to be with you again a quarter later. I am happy to go together with you through our key performance indicators. Let's start with slide number 10 with order intake and order backlog, please. You see here the development Stefan already mentioned, 49%+ in order intake, reaching up to EUR 761 million, which is around about EUR 250 million more than a year ago at the same time. Including in this figure, the EUR 250 million increase is obviously also the first consolidation impact of TRIOPTICS with around EUR 88 million, EUR 87.6 million. But even considering this first consolidation impact, it's a strong development of the underlying businesses.
With having realized this, our book-to-bill grew to 1.25 compared to 1.01 prior year. In Q3 stand-alone this year, our order intake reached EUR 252.7 million, which represents a plus of 42.8% compared to the Q3 of the last year. If you then look at the order backlog, obviously with 20.6% sales increase and 49% order intake development, we have also a strong increase in the order backlogs, which grew by 34.1%. It's substantially higher than at the year-end. Our intention is to convert in the rest of this fiscal year 2021, around 44.1% into revenue.
Then on the next slide, you see the revenue split over the quarters and for the nine-month period. Already mentioned the 20.6% sales increase, revenue increase. In Q3 stand-alone, which has a record of revenue for a Q3 in the last 10 years, we have 24.9% higher revenue than in Q3 2020. Yeah. In this development, Light & Optics grew significantly due to revenue contribution from TRIOPTICS. In this case, it's EUR 67.1 million. The organic growth, Stefan already mentioned, our SEMI businesses are doing quite well. Let me say this quite well. Our biophotonics is also developing very strong. Light & Production, you will see later on when Stefan is going with us through the division development.
Light & Production also reported revenue growth. Happy to say this. The decline in revenue of Light & Safety, they are still around 12% behind prior year at this time, was attributable to delayed placement of orders, which is normal in such a kind of business. It's a project-driven business. Projects are sometimes lasting longer, and especially in this COVID-19 pandemic times, not so easy to be precise. We have also had related to the pandemic delays in delivery of electronic components. All in all, these are the main reasons for this development, and we are quite optimistic that they will have a strong Q4 for the rest of the year. The acquisition of TRIOPTICS and the strong demand there raised our revenue share, especially in Asia Pacific, significantly.
As a matter of fact, around 60% of TRIOPTICS business is realized in this region. This was, by the way, one strategic reason to acquire them, to strengthen our Asia Pacific footprint. All in all, the share of revenue we generate abroad grew to 75.1% after 73.2% prior year. If we then go to our profitability KPIs, EBITDA and EBIT, you see also very strong positive development. In terms of EBITDA, we have even passed the EUR 100 million line. After nine months, we have reached EUR 121.2 million, which is an increase of 81.9%.
Please take into account, as Stefan already mentioned, there are some minus effects and a lot of other positive one-off effects concerning the conditional purchase price components from the acquisitions we made last year. For example, the purchase price allocation coming with us in the inventory step of TRIOPTICS with -EUR 1.8 million. On the other side, the one-off effects of around EUR 25.6 million in connection with TRIOPTICS and INTEROB. Even taking this into account, it's a very strong underlying profitability. Don't forget that we had already booked and to book acquisition costs with the acquisition of Berliner Glas and SwissOptic, which we have signed in the meantime.
All in all, we are really happy that our EBITDA margin has improved to 19.9% coming from 13.2% a year ago. The EBIT is including even stronger purchase price allocation impacts coming from TRIOPTICS acquisition at the end of the last year in Q4 mainly. We have seen our full year impact there. This is the reason why the purchase price allocation impacts and the EBIT increase from EUR 5.9 million- EUR 12.1 million. Even taking this into account, we have reached EUR 80.5 million, which is a plus of 146.4% and the EBIT margin of 13.2%, which is really a strong underlying profitability coming from 6.5% a year ago.
Yes, as in this figure, we have already also included the EUR 25.6 million impact from the conditional purchase price component, as already mentioned, when I explained to you the EBITDA development. If you then follow me, please, on the next slide, you see the P&L of our group a little bit more in detail with gross margin, functional costs and other operating results and taxes. Let me state very first at the beginning, we are very happy when we look at the earnings per share, which has increased from EUR 0.43 - EUR 1.12 per share, which is a very strong development.
Having the reason that our tax rate is relatively low due to regional profit distribution and the tax-neutral income I've already explained to you. The gross margin has been impacted already by a little bit higher material costs here as well as the negative purchase price allocation impact of the inventory set up from TRIOPTICS, but also from a product mix impact. We will see the development should be a little bit better in the Q4.
The functional costs are at the level of prior year + EUR 10 million around, from EUR 136 million- EUR 147 million, mainly driven by the selling expenses, which have increased by EUR 10 million, coming with us, the people, the teams of TRIOPTICS and the higher purchase price allocation impacts of TRIOPTICS here. The rest of the costs, the R&D and the admin costs are more or less in line, also boosted by consolidation impacts from TRIOPTICS in case of admin expenses. The other operating results includes the EUR 25.6 million one-offs coming from conditional purchase price components from the acquisitions in the prior year, 2020. Having said this, let me come to my final slide concerning our free cash flow development.
You see that the free cash flow ends up after nine months. In this case, it's value of our operating free cash flow from operating activities minus from investing activities and before interest and taxes, I have to state. This development at the first glance looks not so strong. It's better than prior year, but you could argue why is it so less in terms of absolute value in relationship to earnings before taxes? Well, first of all, the extraordinary one-offs are not counted for free cash flow. That's obviously. We will pay less for the purchase of the company, but it's not a matter of the free cash flow statement here. We have increased our investments significantly, and you will see relatively high investments at the year-end compared to prior year.
We have already told to you, we are doing every effort we can to increase our capacities here and there in new machinery. We have, we are on our way to increase our production space in Florida. We are on our way to buy new machines and equipment in the sites we are using right now. Stefan already mentioned our starting point for the new fab for the EUV business in Dresden. All in all, we are spending more and more money, but it's okay because it's for future growth and for future profitability development. Last but not least, you see that, our working capital has increased significantly, mainly driven by an inventory increase of more than EUR 40 million compared to prior year at this time.
This is obviously a reason. Some reasons are there, lying there. The major reason is we have a huge, as always, a huge and strong Q4 in front of us, and we want to be very well prepared for the sales and the realizing of our shipments to the customers. On the other side, we have undertaken here and there some purchases for buffer stock reasons because of the supply chain issues we have here and there to secure our development for the rest of the year. We did it because we have such a strong and good and ongoing free cash flow development to support the business and the customer. Just to highlight this before you ask me this question, so to speak.
I'm sure Stefan and I, we are totally aligned. Having started this path of the development of Jenoptik, of transforming it to a very focused, clean and lean photonics machine, so to speak, we have taken some money from the capital market, and it's our duty to pay it back. We have still a focus on cash flow. Cash is still king, but we still have today, I can confirm, a very strong balance situation and have a lot of freedom to support the strategic development our CEO is running for. This is all I'd like to share with you for the time being, and I'm happy to hand over to Stefan again, who will go with us, with you through the nine-month development of our divisions. Stefan.
Yeah. Cash is still king.
Yeah.
I mean, it's great to have a CEO, a CFO on my side that helps us to keep our feet on the ground here. We do want to push for strategic development, but at the end of the day, I used to have a professor at uni that keeps saying or kept saying, cash matters. It continues to matter for us. Hey, if you follow me please on page 16, that's start with Light & Optics. What am I supposed to say? I don't know how to best describe it without going completely overboard here. I just best use the statements we made on paper here, continuing strong demand from semiconductor equipment. I guess that's, it's a perfect understatement.
It's almost crazy what's going on out there when it comes to demand for semiconductors and with that comes the demand for investment in the semiconductor equipment industry. We do all we can to support our customers in their due, you know, quest for delivering more and more and more. We do what we can do at the moment, but it's really almost crazy out there, which is anyway great for us. But we also know that we have a responsibility here towards our customers and the entire marketplace. Let me point out that not only semicon is growing in Light & Optics, but we also do have a nice uptake in our biophotonics business.
I always already referenced the acquisition of BG Medical, which will significantly improve our footprint in life science and healthcare. As a result of all of that, order intake in the first nine months of this year almost doubled versus prior year. Included is around EUR 88 million order intake from the first consolidation of TRIOPTICS after nine months. Nevertheless, even if you dial that back out, the core order growth is still at 60% for Light & Optics, which is really phenomenal. Sales were up 52.6%. Little to add to that. We're, as I say, working hard to convert as many orders into sales as we possibly can. I think the 52.6% is a strong result.
The profitability is, yeah, what am I supposed to say? It's very, very strong. I do wanna point out again that there are special effects in it, positive as well as negative. You know, the bottom line, we have an EBITDA margin of more than 30% for Light & Optics. Again, that does include specific and one-time effects. Please do not ask us to carry that forward into the future, definitely. Of course, we'll continue to work as hard as we can to also make the underlying business as profitable as possible. Let's go to Light & Production, which saw a good development actually in the first nine months. Order intake is up 20.7% versus last year. Granted, last year has been very, very challenging for the automotive industry.
I'm not going to say that the automotive industry is already out of the weeds here, but for us at least, the order intake develops pretty nicely. As I said earlier, up 20.7%. Sales are up 4.3%, but we still have ways to go. There are challenges in this business when it comes to supply chain and the like, but overall, I think we can show and demonstrate with those financials and those numbers, right, we can manage those challenges. I said all the time, we have dialed that into our forecast as we can manage. It's not as if we were completely decoupled from the industry though. What I'm really proud of is profitability of Light & Production.
It almost grew by 3x as last year to now EUR 12.6 million. The measures we've taken last year to take structural costs out of our business do bear fruit now. I think that's a topic that you hear us repeating again and again. We did lay the foundation for this year's success last year and the year before. Again, it's great to have a good quarter. It's great to have a good year, but even more importantly, we actually laid the foundation for further growth and margin expansion into the future. Let's go into Light & Safety real quick, where we do see great order intake up 31.1%, but challenges on the sales side. That is indeed now the result of the challenges that we see in supply chain as everybody else.
At the beginning of the year, we were almost on a shortfall for these products. We've managed to overcome those issues. We are catching up on the sales side as well. In Light & Safety, we do believe that we will get back to around last year's levels in sales. I mean, we'll have to see how the last couple of weeks will pan out for Light & Safety. Essentially, the more complex the product becomes, the more deliveries we have, the more we become an integrator in this business, and with full solution models, the more we of course also depend on outsourced parts, and on supply. Again, we manage, but in Light & Safety, at least in the first few months, we did see the effect of the challenges in supply chain.
Again, order intake is great, and it's now a matter to convert orders into sales. VINCORION order intake somewhat down versus last year, to be precise, 13.1% of the nine months. We do expect that to improve in the next few weeks. Nevertheless, overall, the markets for VINCORION are not easy. They continue to be challenged. Yes, there are more flights now, but still overall, the aviation industry is still in troubled waters, in the choppy waters. I have to see how the next few weeks and months for VINCORION pan out on an operational perspective. Yeah, I'd say markets start to stabilize, but it's still a challenging market environment in which VINCORION is operating. Somewhat down, we also see our sales figure. Sales is down by -1.4%.
Essentially at last year's level, but somewhat down. Again, I would like to point your attention to the profitability figure here as well. The structural cost takeout that we have executed, in particular in 2020, does pay off now. We have sustainable margin expansion despite the fact that we have challenges on the sales side, which I think is a great result. Let me at this moment also say that today we are not going to comment on any questions around the strategic future of VINCORION. I think enough said about it. No further comments on any speculations on the strategic future of VINCORION at this point. Let me take it all together. I mean, again, we are. How to put that? We are German engineers. We're not necessarily known for going completely crazy on our emotional statements.
We're not very good on the emotional side, shall we say. We better concentrate on developing products and helping our customers. By God, those nine months, they were pretty phenomenal for us. It is driven by a number of facts in our environment. I mean, we all know that COVID is a challenge to the society, and we all know that the digitization of our world, if anything, has been driven by COVID. With our businesses, our portfolio, we actually profit from that. We benefit from that. I don't wanna sort of be cynical here. It is a challenging world out there, but I think we've made our homework. I think that's the most important thing. We've made our homework in the last years. We embarked on an important transition.
We embarked on a journey to transform Jenoptik from a diversified industrial, almost a conglomerate, into a focused technology group. I think over the last years, and in particular, over the last 12, 18 months, we delivered on that promise, if you want. With the acquisition of TRIOPTICS, with the acquisition of BG Medical, SwissOptic in Switzerland, SwissOptic in China, but also with the portfolio measures that we've taken. We've cleaned up our portfolio, and we've improved big time our operational setup, when it comes to structures, to organizations, in many ways. We have our challenges still, that's for sure. I guess the sheer fact that we basically already fulfilled almost all our strategic, if you want, promises that we made for 2022 actually speaks for itself. We're proud of that.
We would like to again thank all our associates, everybody that supported us, and of course, our investors that helped us and supported us in that journey and that are with us. We don't believe we are at the end, we are at the beginning. There is lots to do, and we will continue to work hard to fulfill all of that and to make our dream of making a better world possible with the power of light a reality. Let me come to the outlook here. We confirm our guidance for this year. I think everything else would be quite surprised. We confirm our guidance for revenues between EUR 880 million and EUR 900 million. We have a very strong order intake, which is significantly above our sales number.
Yeah, we do believe that this year, our order intake for the portfolio that we have will be over and above the EUR 1 billion mark, which is of course important, the milestone for us. We expect TRIOPTICS to increase revenues by at least 20% this year, and therefore contributing significantly to the sales number and to the success of Jenoptik. We do believe that the EBITDA margin will be between 19% and 19.5% this year. We've pointed it out a number of times during the call. There are positive and negative one-time effects in this number. Even if you strip it out, the underlying EBITDA margin is certainly over and above our strategic target for 2022 already this year.
The effect of the restructuring measures and the right-sizing measures and the structural cost takeout that we've executed in 2020 bear fruit now. We do see success of those measures. It wasn't easy, but I think it was necessary. We basically harvest the fruits of that this year and in the years to come. Talking about years to come, I already pointed to some of the, if you want, structural drivers for growth in our business. Page number 22, we've listed that. Again, the digitization of our world, and the fact that COVID acted almost like a catalyst to that is going to be with us for the foreseeable future, at least.
We do see no slowdown in the demand for semiconductor chips and semicon applications, and that does drive our business big time at the moment. We do believe that things like augmented and virtual reality are maybe near an inflection point. We do think that further out on the horizon, there are applications around quantum optics that might even replace what we know as a semicon business today. We are aiming to play an important role in those optical technologies. When it comes to health, I mean, there is an increasing demand in therapies and diagnostic methods, and most of those are actually based on optical means, and we're nicely placed with our healthcare and life sciences.
With the acquisition of BG Medical, we've expanded that big time, and we have a lot of faith and a lot of trust in that healthcare business of ours. We all talk about production and making the world a better place. There are a lot of people currently gathering up in Glasgow, Scotland, trying to find ways to reduce CO2 emission and things like that. Very important thing for you, for the human being, for the planet, essentially. We also need to produce our goods, and we need to keep producing somehow. We at Jenoptik have technologies that help the world produce in a more sustainable way. We enable the production of electric mobility and other very, very important parts of making the world more sustainable, and we are very committed to that.
We've pointed to the financial measures that we've taken. Lastly, but probably equally importantly, we do need mobility. I mean, yes, we need to reduce carbon-based mobility, but we also need to make sure that we have intelligent solutions for safety way of getting around. Every life that's lost on our roads is a life too many. With our technologies, we help communities to make our roads and public places safer. I think that's a very, very noble thing to do. To take it all together, we are really proud of what we've achieved thus far. We believe that there's more to come. Stay tuned. We're looking forward to seeing as many as possible of you at our Capital Markets Day at the end of the month.
With that said, let's pause here and looking forward to a lot of questions you might have.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer round. If you would like to ask a question, please press nine followed by the star key on your telephone. After pressing nine and star key once on your telephone keypad, you will hear an automatic confirmation. To withdraw your question, please press nine and star key again. Now, please give the key combination nine and star key once to raise a question. Our first question is from Craig Abbott from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please, your line is now open.
Yes. Hi. Good morning, everyone. Yeah, I wanna start off, please, by just trying to get a little bit more clarity exactly on all these different one-offs for all of us.
If we start with first of all, my first question on that front is please, what is the difference, and where do we see this, between the EUR 25.6 million reported at the group level, and the EUR 20.7 million referred to in the Light & Optics section? That's the first part. Second is could you please quantify all the different countering effects? 'Cause you said several times there were some negative effects, I think some related already to the M&A costs, in related to the acquisition. My third related question on that is why not just continue reporting statutory and adjust EBITDA and make this much easier to track?
The final question on this point is just do you have some visibility on whether we might expect further earn-out related gains in the coming quarters? That's all on that second point. The second question, and I'll stop, is just the order pipelines across each of your divisions. We understand SEMI looks very, very good. In the other three divisions, you can maybe talk a little bit about your order pipelines? That would be very helpful. Thank you.
Sure. Craig, thanks for your questions and I'll try to address, and I think Hans-Dieter is gonna help me.
Yeah.
on the numbers figure, but just in sort of top level. The difference between the group one-offs and the Light & Optics one-off is mainly INTEROB.
Yeah.
Um-
which we have reported in L&P.
Exactly. Which you find in L&P.
EUR 4.9 million.
Yeah, EUR 4.9 million. That's basically the difference between group and, I don't know. I think that explains the difference.
Okay. Okay.
-between 25.6 And the 20.7 .
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Negative effects are predominantly PPA effects that we have, and that's to do with inventory step up. Yeah, I have to say that I was also, yeah, in the beginning, I was a bit puzzled why do we see a PPA effect in an EBITDA number?
Mm-hmm.
That's to do with the inventory step-ups after acquisition. Obviously the majority of the PPA effects are in the EBIT, but some of those are also in the EBITDA, and that's the negative effects we are referring to. Of course, there are one-off costs to do with the acquisition, but we do not report them. The costs to do with the support, like acquisition costs, we do not include in those one-offs. Okay?
Yeah.
Further earn-outs, it's a bit too early to say, obviously. It depends on where in particular TRIOPTICS will end up with. INTEROB is done on that front. We will have to see how the next few weeks of TRIOPTICS will pan out. I mean, we do have fairly good visibility on it by now. It's not as if we have you know quarters to go to the year end. I think we're mainly done. I wouldn't expect huge swings anymore, let's put it that way. I think we're fairly settled. Depends on the last couple of weeks, but don't expect huge swings anymore. On your question on adjusted EBITDA or non-adjusted EBITDA, I mean, that's always almost like a philosophical question.
We were for years saying we didn't like adjusted EBITDAs. We just wanna, you know. Again, that's just us engineers here. What matters is below the line. We didn't wanna sort of confuse everybody with all those adjustments. We did it last year in particular to explain and make transparent the costs that we had in connection with restructuring, which is why for last year we did do an adjustment in our EBITDA numbers. We actually believe in the real numbers anyway. Therefore, yeah, we don't like adjusted for whatever reason. I mean, it's a fair question, but for now, we would rather just stick with statutory numbers, and that's it. Hey, it's always a good question.
And Stefan-
Yeah.
Let me please make some additional remarks, if you don't mind. We don't expect these one-offs we have in this year around these earn-outs because with the acquisition of Berliner Glas Medical and SwissOptic, they have not been any earn-outs agreed. We will have not these impacts in the next year. It's always a problem to change from year to year with adjustments or without adjustments. We talk to the auditors, and they also struggle with it, and Saint-Gobain is struggling with it. We finally came to the conclusion to make it transparent to all of you. This is why we are informing you and reporting it with highlighting these one-offs, where they are, how big they are, and where they are coming from.
Because we think, after having closed the fiscal year 2021, it should be okay for the future. This is also a reason, because then we would have one or two years of adjustments, and so we decided to stop these adjustments in the year 2021.
Yeah. Which we always meant it to be one time thing.
Yeah.
in 2020.
Yeah. Yeah.
On the order pipeline, I mean, you do see the order intake figures that the demand is high, you know, across the board. Obviously it's different in the different businesses somewhat. I would say by and large, you know, the demand in the government businesses, i.e., Light and Safety, is just ongoing strong. There is. I don't see any change there. We did see a nice pickup in demand, in particular in the automotive industry, but we also know that the automotive industry is still challenged. We have to see how that develops. In our books, we do see a good auto intake pickup, but we have to also take into consideration that that's versus a very weak comparator. I think we have to sort of put this into perspective.
VINCORION, I did try to explain already. I mean, VINCORION is. I don't know. It's I guess the best way to characterize it's uncertain in terms of how fast the demand in the aviation industry is really going to pick up. There are people that point to the amount of flights in North America being as high as 2019. There are others saying, "Well, yeah, but try to get a flight from Europe to America. It's challenging already." So, and at what point that translates into more order intake from Airbus and Boeing and the like is even more difficult to predict. At this moment, I would say that the industry is still taking out overcapacity, if I'm truly honest with myself on this, with us here.
Of course, on the demand side for the defense products, that's always. There you have big swings because you have big tenders. There are discussions in Germany about defense spending and so on and so forth. All in all, I would say it's stable. Maybe that's the best way to characterize it. I don't think it's going to grow big time in the next few quarters. It's stable, I would say. The more important I think it is that we did do these measures around structural cost takeout for VINCORION to improve its underlying profitability big time.
Okay.
That's hopefully answering the. I hope that this gives you a better sort of picture. You know, on Light & Optics, let me just maybe again point out it's not just semicon. I think that's important. Semicon is, I mean, it's SSI. I don't even know how to characterize it. It's almost crazy. We try all we can to help our customers here. Also in biophotonics, everything around the digitization for a while. I mean, TRIOPTICS is going nicely. On the auto side, we're very happy. Very happy.
Okay.
Paving the way for-
Mm-hmm.
Paving the way for the future, basically. Yep.
Our next question is from Richard Schramm from HSBC. Please go ahead with your question.
Yes. Hello, gentlemen. First question concerning Light & Production. I'm not able to share your enthusiasm on the improvement of the results, I'm sorry, because if you strip out one-off amounts we see here, the 5.9% or the 3.6%, then nothing at all is left over for an improvement. I wonder where the structural improvements then are or when they will kick in. What has hindered you to show here underlying a better profitability in this business so far? That would be our first question.
Well, I think I have to at least somewhat disagree with your statement here. If you take out the one-time effects, there is still an improvement in profitability of the business. But I agree, it's not as much as it might seem in a statutory account, and that's why we make it transparent. Now, keep in mind that the structural cost takeout that we've executed will flash through the P&L over the months and quarters. It always takes a bit of time. I always said that you know, we expect for this year to see maybe half of that to materialize in our P&L, and obviously particularly in the second half because it takes time until people basically leave the payroll.
I think we will see more of that in the coming months and quarters. You know, as you say, there is an improvement, but you are right. It's boosted by the one-time effects, and we should see more of that in the coming quarters.
Yeah. Stefan, I would like to underline, in parts of the business we see already these improvements, for example, in the Industrial Metrology business, where we have done the main part of the restructuring efforts. It offsets, actually, in the other businesses around Automation & Integration because they have to recover from a poor order intake in last year, because the industry stopped and COVID-19 pandemic hindered them, in Canada and U.S. from creating order intake and, so they are now working on projects they took into the books in the past with lower margins in this business field, but they are improving on the order intake side and this projected margin, so the margin will increase.
At the moment, the one business field is improving the profitability, whereas the other is still behind. All in all, it adds up more or less to zero if you take the one-off out. For us, it's an improvement because we see where our reduction efforts are already showing first positive outcomes. This I would like to give a little bit more flavor if you go a little bit more deeper into the L&P division.
Just to add to that, I mean, if you just take that, let the numbers speak. You know, if we dial back out the EUR 4.9 million, the one-off effect. If you dial it-
3.6.
It's still a marginal improvement of more than 200 basis points.
There's one off of the sale of ASA.
I mean, don't we have to strip out the EUR 3.6 million also? It's also one-off effect, right?
Yeah. That is true. Yeah, that's right.
We are at EUR 4.1 million, and that's a margin of 3.3%. That's why I insist that there is no improvement at all. I see that you have corresponding effects here on improvement on metrology while the automation business obviously lags behind here. Okay, agreed. Is there a chance that Q4 sees a kind of little bit of an acceleration here to catch up a bit on this, or is it too early for this to expect?
I don't think at this moment, we would want to guide on a particular product line or business quarter by quarter. I think overall and in the mid to long term, we should see the effect of the structural cost take out. Let's not sort of guide and speculate on quarter by quarter figures.
Okay. Another point on the supply side issues. You haven't touched this topic, which is amazing because a lot of companies struggle with this. How do you see the situation? Are you still reasonably doing well here, or do you see also a lot of other companies a deterioration of the situation, and are you running in one or the other business into trouble to get enough material here to keep up production levels? Thanks.
Look, I mean, we're not decoupled from the world. We do see this problem as well, like everybody else. Our teams in purchasing are working hard to secure as much supply as possible. Hans- Dieter pointed also to the working capital increase, we do spend cash, or we bring cash to work to get stuff early and get stuff in. I think the huge difference between order intake and net sales shows that we have dialed into our model, and that's what we always pointed out. We've dialed into our model challenges going forward. We knew that we will get challenges, and we got challenges. It's not as if we're sitting here saying, you know, as I said, we're not decoupled from the world.
We will make our forecast and we are grateful that we were dialing in our models, certain precautions and hedges, dare I say, when we communicated our forecast.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
Our next question is from Malte Schaumann from Warburg Research. Please go ahead with your question.
Yes, good morning. I want also focus on the profitability side, this time the gross margin. Gross margin is still not that strong. I mean, it's still this low gross margin level since 10 years, something like that. I wonder your thoughts around that. I mean, what could be the next action? I mean, semiconductor is strong, microoptics is strong, so this should generally be positive for gross margin. TRIOPTICS should have a pretty solid profitability. Why is gross margin then actually down? Then what are your thoughts about future gross margin development? That's kind of an exceptional year this year then, and should improve clearly in the future. What are your thoughts around that?
Yeah. Thanks for that question. It's almost funny that in our business with, in particular the semiconductor part, in particular the nano optics, microoptics and other parts, we have almost a counterintuitive effect because in these businesses, our gross margins aren't that phenomenal for a number of reasons. Firstly because R&D expenses that are for particular customers and development expenses for particular customers under IFRS are posted against COGS, which does take gross margin down, but it doesn't show up in the R&D line then anymore. Overall, on the profitability of the bottom line is good.
The mix effect is actually, I agree it's a bit counterintuitive, but the more we grow in those businesses, the less gross profit we actually have in the overall mix. Maybe Hans-Dieter can-
Yeah.
Point out to some more numbers here.
I would like to support you, Stefan, in answering the question. The main impact is coming from the areas where we are not using the full capacity of our production sites. For example, as already mentioned, in parts of Light & Production business, especially in the Automation & Integration, in the Prodomax business here. There the gross margin is clearly behind prior year, but they will catch up. Whereas in industrial metrology and the laser processing business, we are already above prior year. In total, this leads that the gross margin in Light & Production is below prior year still at the
Prodomax is highly profitable.
It's highly profitable after the gross margin. Because we explained to you when we acquired Prodomax that the gross margin is below fleet average, yeah? The EBITDA margin is much higher. This is why we are not steering so much, focusing on gross margins.
Yeah.
In this business unit at least. The other reason and explanation is the poor development in terms of sales and therefore also linked in terms of gross margin from Light & Safety. These two businesses, and we call it product mix impact. It's hindering us from showing you an increasing margin, but this will improve. This is on the radar screen, so to speak, and we know it. This is coming also from underutilization capacities in Light & Safety still, but they have a strong Q4 in front of them. Yeah.
Yeah. Again, one in particular, Prodomax is, I think, an interesting thing.
Yeah.
No. Okay. Makes sense. I mean, if I go down further in the line, I mean, at EBITDA level. I mean, if I stay at adjusted. I mean, you don't like to talk about too much about adjusted margins. I mean, it's clear that, if I stay at kind of an adjusted level, I mean, you, when you will achieve kind of EUR 30 million one-off, +1 off this year, 28, what you currently reported so far, around EUR 28 million. If I strip that out, I mean, then your margin will be at around 16%, roughly very, very roughly 16% margin, which compares with more than 17% last year, around 16% 2019. 16% 2018.
In 2018 there was no IFRS 16, so it was actually higher when I compare apples to apples. The margin has not really improved this year in comparison to the past years. Is this lower than 2020? It is lower than 2018. What are your thoughts around that? I mean, is it just VINCORION and then the dilutive effects from Light & Production, which is not running optimally in comparison to prior years? Maybe some more color on that side.
Not quite sure, quite frankly, if I can follow your calculation on the total amount of one-off effects.
I mean, that's pretty easy. I mean, that's EUR 25 million-EUR 26 million coming from the revaluation and then the EUR 4 million book gains reported for the sales of the smaller units.
Yeah. We also have
That makes it then EUR 28 million.
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Got it. We also have the negative effect on the PPA side.
Yeah. That's EUR 1.8. So that's close to EUR 30 million. Deduct EUR 1.8 million.
One, of course, to do with the acquisition which we don't talk about here. Look, I mean
Yeah. Right.
It's included in the EBITDA margin, yeah.
EBITDA margin.
The one-off in the last year has been some millions EUR and then this year will also be a lot of millions EUR.
Yeah.
Because these acquisitions with more than EUR 300 million value each are not cheap. Yeah. With all the lawyers and the auditors, and the investment banks on our side. This we have burdened in the last two years. We have taken it into into the EBITDA margin as it is.
Yeah.
As a matter of fact, we have spent money.
Yeah.
for this transformation of the Jenoptik. Yeah.
In particular, last year, I mean, the profitability last year, again, we shouldn't compare the adjusted with the reported statutory numbers, because last year we did do this adjustment. But you are right. There are special effects in it. There are one-off effects in it. I would say that if you think about the fact that we, you know, we just went through a crisis, you know, kind of COVID, that certainly had an effect on everything and everybody. You know, we believe that we've made mileage on transforming the company. We improved the underlying EBITDA, the underlying profitability of the business. We do have businesses in the portfolio that are below fleet average.
Obviously, you pointed to VINCORION. We pointed to Light & Production, where we do see challenges. Overall, I believe that we did make quite a lot of progress when it comes to making our business more effective.
Yeah. Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Stefan, for example, in the last year, 2020, where Malte is referring to with the adjusted more than 17%.
Mm-hmm.
We had a lot of million savings, personnel cost savings coming from the short-
Short-term labor.
Short-term labor, especially in Canada and U.S. Not so much in Germany, by the way. As a proof, as a matter of fact, it has shown a huge impact which we have not envisioned in the next year.
Mm-hmm.
We got a little bit of boost in the EBITDA margin also in 2020 coming from this. Don't forget this also. Yeah, we don't talk so much like Daimler did. Yeah, they increased dividend payments as a result with hundreds of millions short-time work impact in Germany. We had also some of them, but especially Canada and U.S. Yeah.
I mean, if you take longer term and you're with the company for a while. You follow Jenoptik for quite a while. I believe that in 2016, EBITDA margin was at 14%.
14. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
14% EBITDA margin, 2016. Now we're 2021. You know, whether you dial back out the one-off—one of the factors we make transparent or not, it is, I think, a nice improvement of-
Yeah.
an expansion of the margin of the company.
Yeah.
Yeah. Looking forward to your new midterm, potentially new midterm targets then, coming up later this year. Quick last question on the order intake side, at the Light & Optics division. The incremental demand we saw in the third quarter in comparison to the former quarters. So I saw that TRIOPTICS was a bit higher. But was the rest driven across the board or seen across the board? Or were there specific applications that drove this really high order intake in the quarter?
I think it's really across the board. I'm looking around the room here. Everybody's nodding. Yeah, it seems to be across the board. I don't have any particulars, which does mean I don't remember and recall any particular big one-timers or anything. That would basically mean it's probably across the board. Yeah.
Okay, good. Thanks.
Welcome.
Our next question is from Peter Rothenaicher from Baader Bank, Munich. Please, your line is now open.
Yes. Hello, gentlemen. One question regarding the guidance. You increased your guidance in summer. Now we had in the third quarter aforementioned one-off effects in total around EUR 13 million. Nevertheless, you did not change any more the guidance. Still the 19%-19.5% EBITDA margin. Would it be fair to assume that considering this the expectations for a reported EBITDA should then be at least EUR 10 million higher, also considering then some one-off effects regarding the acquisition of Berliner Glas?
I'm not quite sure if I really understand the calculation here.
You did your increased guidance for 2021 in summer-
Yes.
When we had one of the effects from this purchase price for TRIOPTICS of in total around EUR 15-16 million. Now, after nine months, you have additional purchase price profits of EUR 10 million and the EUR 3.6 million profit from the sale of the entity in Light & Production. This means-
Mm-hmm.
You have one-off profits EUR 13 billion higher than at the point in time when you increased your guidance.
Mm-hmm.
Therefore, I would expect that estimates for EBITDA in 2021 should then be including these additional one-off effects, at least EUR 10 million higher than expected so far?
Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. We have people are saying here. We also have additional costs regarding to the acquisition of,
Of Berliner Glas.
Berliner Glas and TRIOPTICS.
other projects we have in place in-house and integration costs. Finally, in the first nine months, we have not booked so much from these costs because they are now in October and November in the books. Yeah. This is a matter of fact, a burden for Q4. A burden for Q4, which we have, so to speak, also calculated into our guidance because we have not only foreseen some supply chain issue, but also we knew already in the beginning of the year that we are fighting for acquisitions, and we had prepared some budget for this, so to speak. We have also included in our guidance this special effort for the acquisition. Yeah, for the acquisition. Yeah. You will see this in Q4.
We will realize these costs, the main part of it.
In the underlying core business.
It's in the business, yes. Yeah.
Okay. Perhaps, regarding a topic which is also mentioned by many companies as a challenge, it's containers, freight costs, et cetera. To what extent are you feeling such headwinds?
Now you see also some impact already in the gross margin. We told about it. It's not only the underutilization here and there, it's also a little bit coming from higher purchase prices. All in all, it's also in our forecast. It's included in our guidance, also this impact. Therefore it should not be beyond this, but it's already in our estimation for the rest of the year.
Are you able to quantify such headwinds, additional transportation costs and so on?
We don't like to do this, at least not at this time in the year, yeah. Maybe we can share it with you next year, but we don't do it, yeah.
Last point. Could you give us a hint on expected free cash flow then by the year-end? Typically your fourth quarter is relatively strong in cash flow generation. You mentioned on the other side that CapEx will be relatively high in the fourth quarter. Can you give us here some indication?
If we sell as much as we plan to sell in the last month and weeks, then we will have a lot of accounts receivable.
We will have change from inventory to accounts receivable to trade receivables. This is one impact and it's depending when the investments will realize. We are still looking for investment in Q4. Yes, finally, under the line, you are right. Q4 should be the strongest quarter concerning this. We have some counter impacts. Coming from supply changes coming from high sales probably in December, which is then as a trade receivable still not realized in the free cash flow because of the payment terms of our customers, obviously, and the investment part. It's also we have also some delivery issues from the supply chain concerning our investment goods. It's not quite sure when this will be realized.
This all in all is very difficult, very hard to predict very precisely, but we are still aiming for a strong Q4 and obviously higher free cash flow than after nine months. That's clear, yeah.
Okay. Thank you.
Our next question is from Uwe Schupp from Deutsche Bank. Please, your line is now open.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Just one clarification really, or maybe a suggestion, because obviously led to a lot of confusions. You know, maybe could you maybe for the next quarter prepare a reconciliation of the one-time items? Because I guess every one of us was quite surprised by the amount of one-offs, additional one-offs, this quarter. If I do the math, and I look back at your guidance from early in the year, not the increased one, but the earlier one, when you guide for 16%-17%, I think it was, margin, EBITDA margin and the low double-digit increase in revenue. That roughly, you know, you could calculate was an EBITDA of EUR 140 million, back then, implied guidance.
Now, obviously, we calculated the one-time items now several times to EUR 30 million or so. You suggest there are some costs in the maybe low single-digit million area. But be that as it may, it seems that the entire profit guidance increase that you gave earlier in the year is driven by these one-time items. This is despite much better semiconductor business, obviously. It's despite the recovery in biophotonics. I was just wondering, what are we missing in terms of the negatives that you may have underestimated heading into the year? Where is the pressure really coming from outside of obviously VINCORION? Thank you.
I would say, we made that transparent all the time. As we said, there are these one-time effects which leads to an increased EBITDA margin. I mean, I guess your calculation is correct, and we did originally guide, before those one-time effects to between 16% and 17% EBITDA. The one-time effects drive it up to between 19% and 19.5% EBITDA. I think we have been very transparent on that. Your calculation should be correct. I think it's still a, you know, good improvement of our ongoing business. No, you are right. There is a mixed effect that we had with more semicon sales driving up margins and challenges in other businesses which, you know, lag behind.
Again, your calculation is correct, but it doesn't, I think, change anything on the statement we made. We always said or we said at the beginning of the year that we expect the profit, the EBITDA margin to be between 16%-17%. Then we had a number of effects that were pointing us to a significant improvement in that, and we made that very transparent, I think.
Fair enough. Then just to follow up on TRIOPTICS, where the revenue has been a bit lower in Q3. About, I guess 10% if my calculation is correct, quarter-over-quarter. Just wondering whether that is normal seasonality at TRIOPTICS and, you know, whether the EUR 20 million plus or so is still the normal run rate. Thank you.
I think we said last time already that I think we made it transparent last time already. TRIOPTICS has its challenges when it comes to revenue recognition, in particular with the product in Asia. You know, they have complex products, and they need to be installed in China and other places in Asia. It is still challenging to go there. We have engineers on the ground. We do get people there, but they have to stay quarantined. In China, for example, you gotta stay quarantined for 14 days. By the way, it's kind of like it is actually a big burden because you bring people there, then they're not productive for 14 days because they're locked up in a hotel room, for which, by the way, the company has to pay.
We have to pay those engineers extra wages for them to be convinced to go through the hassle and actually do it. We pay higher wages for these people. We pay for their accommodation.
For the hotels.
For the hotels. It's not as if the Chinese government pays for it. Additional cost, and that all takes a toll. TRIOPTICS has its challenges when it comes to revenue recognition. Nevertheless, we do believe that it will this year grow by at least 20%. The rest flows into 2022, which is actually in a way not a bad thing for us, dare I say. We, of course, want to help our customers here, 'cause they badly need the product. We do whatever we can to ship and install, but it has its challenges in particular in Asia.
That's very clear. Thank you.
We have another question from Craig Abbott from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please, the floor is yours.
Yes. Hi. I just have one quick follow-up, please. Just on CapEx, I saw the figure increase this year. You explained some of the reasons behind that. I just wondered if you could give us an outlook for the full year this year, but also probably more importantly for the next, say, two years, you know, particularly bearing in mind as you start to invest now in the new fab in Dresden. If I recall correctly from the original press release on that fab project, there will also be covering some of this government subsidies or government support. If you could maybe.
I've, you know, we don't expect exact figures obviously, but if you could maybe give us some ballpark figure how much of the investments in that Dresden plant might be countered by these government support programs, that would be very helpful. Thank you.
Basically what we said is about, I think EUR 70 million-EUR 80 million is going to be the total investment. Yes, there is support by the government to a certain extent, but please do understand that we can't give you any specific details on that. We're basically drawing on the typical programs that the German government and the local government provides. It's within reason and the typical numbers, not anything extraordinary in terms of support we get. Of course, you know, why would we not get benefit from the support the government gives us here? As you say, it's not extraordinary in either way, not positive or negative. Basically sort of in the ballpark that everybody else gets.
On that CapEx guidance, I'm not quite sure what exactly you were looking for. Are you saying-
The total investments at the group level for this year and for the next two years.
For the next two years, we don't actually guide for that. I think it would be a bit too early. Total group investments for this year, I don't think we have a guidance there in-
No, we only mentioned that it will increase.
Yeah.
Compared to prior year.
Which is pretty clear.
Pretty clear. Yeah.
We spent on acquisitions as well as on operational expenditure.
Yeah. Yeah.
Depending of-
In U.S. and in Jena.
Yeah.
Every place we are producing and
Okay. I mean, can we assume that it'll be even higher next year versus this year?
Yes.
It'll be yes 'cause of Dresden, no?
Dresden will show up next year with the first motion. That's true.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay.
At the moment, there are no questions. Ladies and gentlemen, please press the key combination of nine and star key once to raise the question. There are no further questions from the audience.
Thank you very much. It's been an interesting call. As I said earlier, we are proud of what we've achieved. I think, in particular to do with the transformation of this company. If you look back a few years and, you know, I think we made some mileage on the path of transforming Jenoptik into a more focused technology group. Fair to say there are one-time effects this year. There have been one-time effects last year. We try to be as transparent as possible. There's always a debate, should we at some point maybe go to adjusted EBITDA or continue on statutory or report it?
We believe that at the end of the day, what really matters is what shows up in the statutory accounts and in the audited accounts. That's what matters at the end of the day. Actually what really matters is cash flow and earnings per share and things like that. What really matters is that we have a very solid balance sheet that is basically, I do believe the foundation for future growth and margin expansion. I think that's what's important. Again, I think the acquisition of TRIOPTICS has been a major milestone last year, and we could follow up with another major acquisition this year. I think with that, we're well on the way in transforming this company.
I think we also implemented important measures to make the underlying core business better and expand our efficiency and margins and solve challenges that everybody has at the moment. We still see great order intake, obviously, very good order intake, which is yeah should be good for the future. We do confirm our guidance for this year. Thank you very much. Looking forward to, as I said earlier, seeing many of you.
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